individualism for the masses

BK Marcus is an amateur political economist with no formal education in the subject.

He works from Charlottesville, Virginia as an editorial consultant for the Ludwig von Mises Institute and managing editor of Mises.org.

He is no longer a house husband, nor a faculty spouse, but he is still a dilettante and a layabout, at least in spirit.

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"It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance."

Murray Rothbard

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Benjamin Tucker Marcus
February 19, 2010

Can you say Dewey, et al?

May 27th, 2008 by bkmarcus


I was invited to cross post my last entry to blog.Mises, where “Robert” left this interesting comment, which takes Mises’s general point about government planners and applied it more specifically to the history of American schooling:

What a perfectly fitting metaphor for life in the feedlot. This excerpt brings forth visions of turn of the century industrialists and money changers moving to remake our education system in order to produce a more docile, maleable citizenry. Can you say Dewey, et al? These men, at the behest of the monied oligarchy, colluded to ensure a semi-literate, uneducated working class was made available to “attain the ends which [they] he has assigned to them in his own plans.”

Fast forward nearly a century and the evidence abounds. A knowledge stunted, adolescent citizenry, unable to ascertain the source of their own disquiet, stumbles headlong through life unable to recognize, let alone attempt, a life well lived.

NCLB, to be sure, is emblematic of state sponsored indoctrination plans devised by bureaucrats to “use his fellow citizens as means for the attainment of his own ends, which differ from those they themselves are aiming at.” Our current cadre of education cowpokes, complacent to their desired ends, may soon wake to hear the herd stampeding toward camp, unstoppable.

Posted in metablog, schooling | No Comments »

to deal with men as the breeder deals with his cattle

May 27th, 2008 by bkmarcus

Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (243):

It has been asserted that the physiological needs of all men are of the same kind and that this equality provides a standard for the measurement of the degree of their objective satisfaction. In expressing such opinions and in recommending the use of such criteria to guide the government’s policy, one proposes to deal with men as the breeder deals with his cattle. But the reformers fail to realize that there is no universal principle of alimentation valid for all men. Which one of the various principles one chooses depends entirely on the aims one wants to attain. The cattle breeder does not feed his cows in order to make them happy, but in order to attain the ends which he has assigned to them in his own plans. He may prefer more milk or more meat or something else. What type of men do the man breeders want to rear — athletes or mathematicians? Warriors or factory hands? He who would make man the material of a purposeful system of breeding and feeding would arrogate to himself despotic powers and would use his fellow citizens as means for the attainment of his own ends, which differ from those they themselves are aiming at.

Posted in LvMI, economics | No Comments »

the autological grandiloquence of pleonastic and periphrastic circumlocution

May 27th, 2008 by bkmarcus

This line from Human Action strikes me as very funny:

If maximizing profits means that a man in all market transactions aims at increasing to the utmost the advantage derived, it is a pleonastic and periphrastic circumlocution. (243)

It is also a great example, I think, of autological grandiloquence.

Posted in language | No Comments »